∝Transmission 016: The Battle of Wits: Part 2

[gauntletmods]

[a familiar, pleasant three note chime echoes from the Spheres as DIVA appears.]

Attention all non-commissioned and field-enlisted personnel. This is DIVA with a status update. The riddle from the captain of the Cedirra has been solved and we have since arrived at the Eagle Nebula, meeting designation point:"The Pillars of Creation". There is no sign of the enemy fleet thus far, so the Admiral has ordered the fleet to remain here, be on the ready and wait for the time being.

There are still a number of crew members having problems with their Spheres, however, it has been reported that the Sphere technician, Lieutenant Freya, has gone missing. We ask for your patience as a search team is currently attempting to locate her.

In addition, there are oth--

[without warning, a wave of static cuts DIVA off and a very unfamiliar voice with a distinct hissing quality rises above the static.]



[and then the connection cuts off entirely as four loud bangs echo throughout the ships, two audible on the Hawking, and two on the Uesugi.]


DETAILS

Congratulations to you guys for figuring out the solution so quickly!

Now, there could have been a couple ways to solve this puzzle. In the IC portion of the previous post, several different names were dropped, but the most important ones were that of the new enemy Captain. Her first name wasn't quite so important though, but the middle initial and last name were, as was nickname/title "The Brilliant One in the Sky"--and Maris herself gave a subtle clue to confirm that this was the correct solution by saying that she thought she was too. These two titles are two of several titles of the goddess Isis.

Once you got that, you had to find the number associated with Isis. Now, there are several numbers associated in any sort of mythology, but Maris gave a little shout-out to Admiral Ganymede, or Orion as he used to be known in the Crucible days. There was a number associated with Isis and Osiris (Orion's Egyptian equivalent), and that was "fourteen", or the fourteen parts Osiris' body was chopped into. If you took that number and used that to offset the letters of the alphabet in the message, you would have gotten: "In the celestial heavenly bodies, head to where the noble, courageous winged hunters soar about the pillars." A Caesar Cipher was used to scramble the message, another connection to the Greek mythology.

The next part did require a bit research into celestial bodies, but the eagle was the winged hunter spoken about in the riddle, which would have led to either the constellation of Aquila (and in Greek mythology, the eagle was the one who kidnapped Ganymede for Zeus), but the real answer, because of the pillars, was the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula.

Of course...the other method, really, was to ignore all the mythology stuff and just dive at the number and use the process of elimination to figure out what would work to unscramble the cipher. Or try to figure out which letters were used the most and try to assign possible vowels to the message until it became clear. Either way, it was solved, and that's what matters!

Moving forward to the present issues at hand, not only is Lieutenant Freya missing, but DIVA never got a chance to say that Commanders Farix and Menaeus, and Master Chief Zheng of the tea shop, Xiezhi, on the Hawking have also gone missing. To make matters worse, the armory and biosphere on the Uesugi and the docking bays and data archive on the Hawking have been locked for the time being. No one can get in. Not yet, anyway. When, or if, they will be reopened during the course of this plot--and which ones--remains to be seen, but keep an eye out all the same! :>

As an added bonus, there are now multiple shadows gliding around the ship. There are big ones that are able to shift their form, and then there are smaller ones that resemble squirrels. The shadow squirrels are up to players to npc, but there is no way for anyone to interact with them. You cannot catch them, you cannot play with them, you cannot make nice with them. The big shadows will be done with an npc account played by the mods, so contact us here on this post if you want to participate and for your character stalked by the sinister shadows now lurking about the ship when you do post to the community. That way, we can sic the shadow on you and you can still talk to other characters.

Those characters who do participate will hear a very faint hissing noise and smell a distinct odor of rotting flesh before the shadow appears and will stick around as long as the shadow does... which will be pretty much the whole time you've found a way to get rid of it. And there is a way to get rid of it--which you'll find out during the course of the thread with the shadow.

As a reminder, applications will be closing temporarily on Tuesday, July 13th at midnight (CST). That day will be the final day that applications will be looked at, but once it's the 14th, applications won't be processed until the conclusion of this month-long plot.

If you have any questions, go ahead and ask them here or email the mod email (gauntletmods[at]gmail[dot]com)! We welcome it, and our cobwebbed inbox welcomes it. Good luck guys~!

Edit: I forgot to mention that if your character has sensitive hearing and is being stalked by the shadow, they should be able to hear the sound of a bubbling cauldron.